Bennie dug into the lid, pounding and dragging her nails across the wood, reduced to the animal on the other side. She fought the awareness that it was getting harder and harder to breathe. She couldn’t fill her lungs and settled for shallow panting, little intakes of breath that could barely keep her going. She knew she needed oxygen because she could feel her brain get funky, her thoughts melting together in odd ways, like she kept thinking she had a giant can opener and was prying the lid off the box, like in the Popeye cartoons where they took the top off the spinach can, leaving a jagged edge. Boy, she was wishing for one of those can openers right now, and if she had one, she knew it would do the trick.
She kept digging, her arms weakening, hurting from the effort of keeping them up. She’d been scratching and pounding on the same spot on the crack, concentrating all her force on three square inches. She could hear the animal working on the same spot, they had the same idea at the same time, only one idea completely occupying their animal brains, which was to get through, to finally reach the other side.
One animal wanting life and the other wanting death.